


the walk is longer than i remember

by tonyang (kurusui)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-13 21:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17496092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurusui/pseuds/tonyang
Summary: Seungcheol made it look easy. Leading, that is. Not leaving.





	the walk is longer than i remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalachuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalachuchi/gifts).
  * Inspired by [heart, hold this together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13342593) by [kalachuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalachuchi/pseuds/kalachuchi). 



> this takes place before _heart, hold this together_ with minor continuity differences.
> 
>  **dear andrea:** writing this was intimidating because i don’t want to disappoint you - i hope you like it TT___TT
> 
>  **listening:** [the cold and radiant sun, sun...](https://youtu.be/iciFwCnsyY4)

One day in March, the director for Seventeen’s concert VCRs approached Junhui in the basement practice room and handed him an envelope. It was a sturdy manila envelope, but when Junhui opened it he found a few sheets of white paper, the instructions looking like they were printed on a machine that was almost out of ink.

“What is this?” he asked the director, sitting down on the worn-out couch, skimming the words in the hopes he would receive a verbal explanation first.

The director coughed, and then Junhui looked up at her face and saw that she was not the director but rather her assistant. “It’s a questionnaire. Everyone is doing one of these for the encore VCR script.” He didn’t respond, so she moved to hand him a slip of paper, folded in half, and half again. (So no one cheats, Seungcheol had said upstairs.)

It fell apart in his hands, with no more pressure from fingertips holding it together, like a flower unfurling its petals.

“Is this who I’m writing about?” His face brightened, and dimmed, and then he scratched his head.

“Yes. Everyone drew lots in the conference room, but no one could find you. Director decided it would be faster to give you the last one and have me look for you.” In Junhui’s left palm was a single handwritten name.

“I was here the whole time though?” Laughing sheepishly, he decided not to mention the fact that he was napping on the couch until he heard feet thundering down the back stairs. 

The assistant smiled. “Maybe S.Coups-ssi wanted to give you an extra 15 minutes of peace and quiet.”

She turned to leave, but her words lingered, leaving Junhui to ruminate on the possibility. The idea was not as far-fetched as she most likely believed.

 

 

 

 

That was 3 months ago. Now, at the edge of the stage, Junhui remembers nothing. It’s only when the  _ Our Dawn Is Hotter Than Day  _ instrumental plays from the arena speakers that he remembers – oh, there’s a break in the setlist for a ment here.

Seokmin hands Junhui a towel as Wonwoo and Jihoon pass them with colorful labeled microphones. Glitter from their names disseminates to the floor.

“What a funny pair,” Junhui giggles. “So quiet, but they’re MCing. Together.” Seokmin smiles next to him, and excuses himself.

Junhui watches the two of them on stage awkwardly introducing this corner, and fascinated by their struggle to have a banter, he forgets he’s going to be up there soon, too.

Seungcheol comes up behind him and takes him by the hand. “It’s time, Junnie.” 

Yoon Jeonghan chooses names out of a hat for this ‘thoughts on another member’ corner. The person drawn reads his prewritten answers. It goes: Chan, Minghao, Wonwoo, Seungkwan. At one point he says: “Ju– Joshua!” rather cutely. In the end, Soonyoung and Junhui are left in the middle. 

The lights dim. Junhui hears shuffling around him, but he has no idea what’s going on, and it’s kind of scary. “Is everything okay?” he whispers, anxious to get a response. Soonyoung beside him hisses: “What’s going on?”

Blue spotlights rise to the ceiling and fall back onto Junhui and Soonyoung. In front of them is a single cake with two candles. “Surprise!”

The microphone passes between each member in a row with one rule: Junhui and Soonyoung can’t turn around. Chan heaps praise onto his teammates. Then Jihoon says, “Jun is a good person.”

“This is like, Caratland stuff,” Soonyoung says in awe. “We don’t do this at concerts.”

“That’s why I thought it would be a good idea,” Seungkwan says with a knowing look on his face. “So you would be surprised. And you clearly were.” Beside him, Joshua gives him a thumbs up and leans on his shoulder. Hundreds of rose quartz-serenity lights wave to them in the darkness.

And then it dawns on Junhui. “The– the sheet of questions, that was just a fake assignment? But it’s right here in my hands?”

“It’s the same thing all of us did, silly. And we drew lots for real. Seungcheol was annoyingly serious about it. But the rest of us–” Jeonghan gestures to the ten members beside him– “had some extra questions about you two.”

“You– you didn’t call me to that meeting on purpose! You just let me sleep in the basement!” Everyone laughs.

Seungcheol slings his arm around Junhui’s shoulder. “I really did go look for you,” he says with a grin. “My job was actually to distract you, if I found you. I would ask you to teach me a phone game – whatever one you were inevitably playing.”

“Am I that predictable?” Junhui asks. He already knows, though.

“Yes you are,” Seungkwan says bluntly, patting him gently on the back.

“And so,” Jihoon begins impatiently, “we’re going to move on now–”

“So I don’t get to read my message to Jeonghan-hyung?” Soonyoung interrupts. Everyone falls silent. The audience of fans laughs.

“Well–” Wonwoo hesitates, looking to the side for a sign.

“Don’t we have some time? Come on, Wonwoo-ya.” The pitch of his voice rises. Soonyoung is dangerously close to starting a round of aegyo, so Wonwoo sighs and just hands him the microphone. 

While Soonyoung recounts the best of his Jeonghan musings, Junhui feels butterflies.

“Wow, I’m so excited to hear what Junnie said about me,” Seungcheol says across the floor. But he’s looking at the fans, and eventually Yoon Jeonghan, his harbor. Not at Junhui. And likewise, Junhui looks anywhere but to him.

More than before, Junhui is nervous now because of expectations for a grand finale. Now that Seungcheol knows this is for him, even though no one else has confirmed it. There are no other options, after all. Seungcheol picks up on things easily when it has to do with him.

“Seungcheol-hyung is a really cool person,” Junhui starts, no second level to his words.

 

 

 

 

On an autumn off day, Junhui sits on a small couch in the 7th floor dorm, feet up and socks off. No one else is supposed to be home, except Joshua in the first bedroom sleeping off a late night with his friends. As a matter of course, Choi Seungcheol has broken his way into a dorm that isn’t his and flops onto the cushion next to him. It’s only a three-seater, but at the same time, it seats three people.

“What are you playing?”

“Not playing, scrolling through a Weibo supertopic.”

“What’s a supertopic?”

Junhui looks at Seungcheol, pondering. As if he really needs to give their leader another way in which to gauge his own popularity on social media. 

“Nothing important.” 

“Sure it isn’t,” Seungcheol says, and leans closer, chest on Junhui’s knee. Junhui first stretches his left arm high so Seungcheol can’t see or reach his phone, but then he starts laughing and shifts in his seat. 

“That tickles!”

“That’s the point,” Seungcheol says, grinning, and the phone drops to the crevice between the couch cushions. 

“You won’t understand anyway,” Junhui realizes out loud. “You can’t read a single word, can you.”

“I know this says Moon Junhui. Wen Junhui,” he corrects himself, slightly accented. “I know how to say it.” He holds up the phone and scrolls through the pictures like it’s a demonstration. “I have eyes.”

“That’s enough,” Junhui says loudly. “No more cellphones.” 

“Don’t want me to see pretty pictures of you?” Junhui slaps Seungcheol on the thigh. “That hurt!”

Seungcheol is all but short of resting his head on Junhui’s shoulder – it would be too much weight in this position. His left knee knocks against Junhui’s.

Junhui sips at his tea, winces. “It’s still hot.” He sets the mug down on the table. Seungcheol reaches across the table, grabs one of Mingyu’s designer coasters from inside its storage box and slips it under the mug.

“Be patient,” Seungcheol says. “And you’ll leave rings on the wood. These were expensive, use them.”

“‘Kay.”

Junhui pulls his sweater sleeves over his hands. (Seungcheol's hands are shoved in his pockets.) “What will we do without you,” he says, just kidding at first, but the question tapers off into a statement of worry.

“When will you be without me?” 

“...Military. Right?”

Seungcheol’s mouth is open for just a fraction of a second. “Right.”

“Yeah.”

Junhui doesn’t like to think about this, so he’s not sure why he brought up the topic at all. 

“It’ll be fine. Want me to make you leader while I’m away?” he teases. There is a twinkle in his eye, but Junhui shrinks back into his side of the couch. Eyes making contact, half incredulous, and half pleading to be released from this theoretical scene. On the other hand, Seungcheol looks kind of tired, as if making the joke alone was at his own expense.

“Shua-hyung,” Junhui says. “Before me.”

“Well, never mind that. I don’t think it’ll come to that. I think I’ll come back before your friends are even gone.”

“Friends...?” He trails off. “Oh. Wonwoo. Jihoon. Soonyoung.” The other unit leaders are his age. “Wait, really? I don’t get how the system works.”

“If I leave early, that is.”

“Oh,” Junhui says. And then– “Will you?”

Seungcheol doesn’t have to say anything for Junhui to know the answer. So he pulls away further, self-distancing, so he’s not the one who’s always left behind. 

“I don’t like this,” he says after a minute.

“No one does,” Seungcheol says gently.

 

 

 

 

(Back to the stage.

“I’m happy... that I could ask you for help,” Junhui concludes. “And... I want everyone to know how great you are.”

Seungcheol goes in for a big hug, one that really engulfs Junhui to the point where he almost can’t breathe for moments, before it relaxes into a comforting warmth. Seungcheol all big smiles, Junhui small delicate ones.)

 

 

 

 

He made it look easy to the point where it was hard to imagine following in his footsteps. Leading, that is. Not leaving.

The time after that conversation in the living room passes faster than Junhui expected it to. There were a lot of meetings that year, between Seungcheol, Jihoon, Soonyoung, and Seventeen’s management. Most of the group had no idea what was going on. But at the end of it, Seungcheol made an announcement.

“I’m going a year ahead,” he said in the living room of their now small dorm. A year before the final enlistment notices, and then some extra months as padding. “Because we figured that it would be better to set up new leadership.”

“Is it that important?” Seokmin asked, eyes welling up out of his control. “Do you have to leave us before you’re forced to?” 

“I think it’s for the best,” Seungcheol said. He never said it, but Jeonghan stood beside him in the middle of the room, silent and strangely somber. What he meant is: imagine a Seventeen, who has always been thirteen, without Seungcheol and Jeonghan all at once. And then Junhui saw Joshua staring at the wall clock.

Now, instead of the burden of responsibility resting on one person’s shoulders, they have co-leaders. It’s so many changes at once, ones Junhui doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to. He doesn’t like change.

 

 

 

 

It’s daybreak. 

Seungcheol is going home to meet his family soon, for the last time in a while. Before anything, he needs his hair cut short. When he comes back to Seoul, he will say goodbye to the rest of the members. The issue is that Junhui won’t be there.

“The downsides to having an active career in your home country,” Seungcheol jokes, putting his coat on, while Junhui leans on the doorway, blond hair ruffled and the sleeve of his nightshirt sliding off his shoulder. “I wasn’t planning to wake you up.”

“Good thing I woke up by accident, then. It was like an instinct.” He shuffles around the bedroom, picking up a stray jacket (Mingyu’s) and resolutely walking out the door. “You’re going out now, yes?”

Seungcheol brushes his hair back. There is no sweat, just a shadow of the desire to look good in front of someone else. “Now,” he says.

Junhui, out of sleepiness and the interest of learning consequences to actions, really put on nothing but that jacket. The cold air from outside whips at his face when the front door opens, startling him awake.

“It’s dawn,” Seungcheol says. “Of course it’s cold, silly.” He moves to close the door so that Junhui can find something else to wear, but he’s resisted right away.

“Let’s go,” Junhui says. Where exactly they are going is unclear. He was under the impression that there would be a van waiting to pick Seungcheol up.

“The salon is right down the street,” Seungcheol says. He motions to the shop a few streetlights away. Junhui has never been there, because it’s small and local, and something has always told him his awkward Korean wouldn’t fit in with the banter. 

“Can I walk you?”

“I think you should go back to sleep, Junhui. You also have to leave for your flight in a few hours.” 

Junhui follows him anyway. Seungcheol lets him walk half the distance before stopping. Every step is deliberate and small, and slow. It’s not enough, but it never could have been.

“Go back, Junhui.”

Junhui leans down, his head falling on Seungcheol’s shoulders. And then he lifts it just a little, so he can see the sky. 

“You’re so stubborn,” Seungcheol says, fondly. 

The distance between their feet is large. Junhui’s lanky arms make a loop around Seungcheol’s neck.

“When you come back,” Junhui starts, but he hiccups and can’t get any more words out, even though he wants to say this. Seungcheol holds him close and tells him he doesn’t have to say anything.

Nothing will be as it was again. Both of them know this.

“I’ll make it easier on you,” Seungcheol says. Before Junhui can tell him not to go, Seungcheol turns, and his hand falls out of Junhui’s grip. The hold was starting to get shaky anyway. Seungcheol’s part from nerves, and Junhui from lack of confidence.

The longer they stay together, the harder it will be to say goodbye. Where Junhui is paralyzed, Seungcheol is practiced.

Junhui watches Seungcheol walk away. He does stop. Once or twice, to wipe his tears. Junhui can tell because Seungcheol lifts both his arms in tandem; one sleeve, then the other when it’s stained too wet to be of use. In the end, even he can’t pretend parting doesn’t hurt. But he still doesn't look back.

Behind his silhouette, amidst a backdrop of colors, the sun rises today, as it does and always will.

 

 

 

 

It happened all those years ago, but he won’t let the memory die. Not yet. (One day without realizing it, that too will stop holding weight in his heart. All in due time, and not a moment too soon.)

Seungcheol is a sentimental person about specific things. He latches onto moments he can remember, ones that mean something to him, though sometimes he doesn’t know why. One of those is the concert where Wen Junhui reads these words to him:

Junhui says don’t forget your roots, never do it. Don’t forget practice, don’t forget your hardships, and never forget us.

 

 

 

 

  
  
Seungcheol remembers the reason this script stuck out to him at the time. It was in the middle of a crisis about his own identity. The sudden realization that, maybe, Junhui thought of him as much better than he was. And maybe that was his own fault, like he had pulled one over him. 

 

_ Junhui, you're living in an illusion. _

 

But Junhui was still the one that loved him enough to say that, so could he ever really refuse?

 

 

 

 

When Choi Seungcheol gets off the bus home for the second time, the trees are bare, and the sky is gray. 

Just for fun, he decided not to tell the members he was coming back. On his first break, it was all he could talk about for the weeks leading up to his trip. It was like, to the point where everyone was clearly getting annoyed and no longer responsive to his emails with “We really miss you!” but rather something like “see u soon hyung”. For Seungcheol’s sake and not really from their own heart.

In the reverse sense, he still wants validation now. Just waiting to see how he’s received. An unexpected surprise, but hopefully a welcome one.

The taxi driver has set his navigation app to the Pledis Entertainment building. Halfway through the ride he decides it’s not what he wants to see first. A street early, he says, “Stop the car here,” and hands the driver his money. 

The walk to their old dorm is longer than he remembers. Like rewinding time, but when you rewind something you’re too impatient to get back to the beginning. He must have made this trip hundreds of times, but after enough time spoiled with car rides, it’s easy to forget the sights, the sounds, and the strain in the knees. (He’s old now.) And in winter, snow lines the streets, and the cold air seeps into his clothes.

At the doorstep, no longer theirs, he sits down on the concrete and immediately shivers.

First he calls Jeonghan. No response, so he tries again. And then as a second resort he tries Jihoon. The chance of him picking up is always lower now that he has a new studio and reportedly leaves his cellphone in a locked drawer during work time. 

Also in the J section of his contact list:  _ Juni. _

 

 

 

 

When Junhui pulls up on the curb twenty minutes later, Seungcheol squints to identify the driver, and then his mouth drops open.

The window rolls down. Junhui says, “I have a car now.”

“...I can see that. Why didn’t I hear about it?”

“If I did, what would we talk about in person?”

It’s Junhui's game after all, this newfound skill. Seungcheol can't say he's mad that he lost.

On the drive, Junhui blasts him with information about everything they've been up to, a mile a minute. Seungcheol finds there are plenty of things to talk about. Junhui has finally made that effort to get into new hobbies after years of nagging, mostly from Minghao. 

“I want to try radio,” he says.

Seungcheol gives him a thumbs up. “Go for it.” Junhui smiles, eyes closed.

Junhui is moving forward at rapid speeds, more than he expected. It feels like in the time Seungcheol was gone, everyone advanced and he stayed where he was. It’s not that he’s stagnated at all, but he's not used to measuring his growth in personal steps instead of industry accomplishments. It's from all the emails – new Seventeen units, continued promotional activity. Seungcheol watching the group on TV without him.

Even still–

Junhui’s quiet reassurance is as easy as the warmth of his hand.

“What do you want to do while you're visiting?” he asks.

Watching the familiar buildings on the side of the highways, Seungcheol has too many answers.

He turns back around to face the driver's seat. “I don't know. What do you want ...?”

“Nothing,” Junhui says, eyes on the road. “This.”

 

 

 

 

Wen Junhui functions in distant admiration and not really asking for more than simple pleasures. And that's the best, or maybe even the worst part of him. He never asks.

Choi Seungcheol looks at everyone like they’re the first person he’s ever loved. Like he’ll never care for someone else more.

The best part of Seungcheol is he gives anyway.

 

 


End file.
